The Samba net utility is meant to work just like the net utility available for windows and DOS. The first argument should be used to specify the protocol to use when executing a certain command. ADS is used for ActiveDirectory, RAP is using for old (Win9x/NT3) clients and RPC can be used for NT4 and Windows 2000. If this argument is omitted, net will try to determine it automatically. Not all commands are available on all protocols.

This option allows you to override the NetBIOS name that Samba uses for itself. This is identical to setting the netbios name parameter in the smb.conf file. However, a command line setting will take precedence over settings in smb.conf.

The file specified contains the configuration details required by the server. The information in this file includes server-specific information such as what printcap file to use, as well as descriptions of all the services that the server is to provide. See smb.conf for more information. The default configuration file name is determined at compile time.

This command line parameter requires the remote server support the UNIX extensions or that the SMB3 protocol has been selected. Requests that the connection be encrypted. Negotiates SMB encryption using either SMB3 or POSIX extensions via GSSAPI. Uses the given credentials for the encryption negotiation (either kerberos or NTLMv1/v2 if given domain/username/password triple. Fails the connection if encryption cannot be negotiated.

level is an integer from 0 to 10. The default value if this parameter is not specified is 1.

The higher this value, the more detail will be logged to the log files about the activities of the server. At level 0, only critical errors and serious warnings will be logged. Level 1 is a reasonable level for day-to-day running - it generates a small amount of information about operations carried out.

Levels above 1 will generate considerable amounts of log data, and should only be used when investigating a problem. Levels above 3 are designed for use only by developers and generate HUGE amounts of log data, most of which is extremely cryptic.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the log level parameter in the smb.conf file.

The file specified contains the configuration details required by the server. The information in this file includes server-specific information such as what printcap file to use, as well as descriptions of all the services that the server is to provide. See smb.conf for more information. The default configuration file name is determined at compile time.

This command allows the Samba machine account password to be set from an external application to a machine account password that has already been stored in Active Directory. DO NOT USE this command unless you know exactly what you are doing. The use of this command requires that the force flag (-f) be used also. There will be NO command prompt. Whatever information is piped into stdin, either by typing at the command line or otherwise, will be stored as the literal machine password. Do NOT use this without care and attention as it will overwrite a legitimate machine password without warning. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Join a domain. If the account already exists on the server, and [TYPE] is MEMBER, the machine will attempt to join automatically. (Assuming that the machine has been created in server manager) Otherwise, a password will be prompted for, and a new account may be created.

[TYPE] may be PDC, BDC or MEMBER to specify the type of server joining the domain.

[UPN] (ADS only) set the principalname attribute during the join. The default format is host/netbiosname@REALM.

[OU] (ADS only) Precreate the computer account in a specific OU. The OU string reads from top to bottom without RDNs, and is delimited by a '/'. Please note that '\' is used for escape by both the shell and ldap, so it may need to be doubled or quadrupled to pass through, and it is not used as a delimiter.

[PASS] (ADS only) Set a specific password on the computer account being created by the join.

[osName=string osVer=String] (ADS only) Set the operatingSystem and operatingSystemVersion attribute during the join. Both parameters must be specified for either to take effect.

Add a interdomain trust account for DOMAIN. This is in fact a Samba account named DOMAIN$ with the account flag 'I' (interdomain trust account). This is required for incoming trusts to work. It makes Samba be a trusted domain of the foreign (trusting) domain. Users of the Samba domain will be made available in the foreign domain. If the command is used against localhost it has the same effect as smbpasswd -a-i DOMAIN. Please note that both commands expect a appropriate UNIX account.

Establish a trust relationship to a trusted domain. Interdomain account must already be created on the remote PDC. This is required for outgoing trusts to work. It makes Samba be a trusting domain of a foreign (trusted) domain. Users of the foreign domain will be made available in our domain. You'll need winbind and a working idmap config to make them appear in your system.

This subcommand is used to view and manage Samba's rights assignments (also referred to as privileges). There are three options currently available: list, grant, and revoke. More details on Samba's privilege model and its use can be found in the Samba-HOWTO-Collection.

Export users, aliases and groups from remote server to local server. You need to run this against the PDC, from a Samba machine joined as a BDC. This vampire command cannot be used against an Active Directory, only against an NT4 Domain Controller.

Set the value of the "msDS-SupportedEncryptionTypes" attribute of the LDAP object of ACCOUNTNAME to a given value. If the value is omitted, the value is set to 31 which enables all the currently supported encryption types.

(Re)Create a BUILTIN group. Only a wellknown set of BUILTIN groups can be created with this command. This is the list of currently recognized group names: Administrators, Users, Guests, Power Users, Account Operators, Server Operators, Print Operators, Backup Operators, Replicator, RAS Servers, Pre-Windows 2000 compatible Access. This command requires a running Winbindd with idmap allocation properly configured. The group gid will be allocated out of the winbindd range.

Only available if ldapsam:editposix is set and winbindd is running. Properly populates the ldap tree with the basic accounts (Administrator) and groups (Domain Users, Domain Admins, Domain Guests) on the ldap tree.

Delete a mapping sid <-> gid or sid <-> uid from the IDMAP database. The mapping is given by <ID> which may either be a sid: S-x-..., a gid: "GID number" or a uid: "UID number". Use -f to delete an invalid partial mapping <ID> -> xx

Use "smbcontrol all idmap ..." to notify running smbd instances. See the smbcontrol(1) manpage for details.

Check and repair the IDMAP database. If no option is given a read only check of the database is done. Among others an interactive or automatic repair mode may be chosen with one of the following options:

Starting with version 3.0.23, a Samba server now supports the ability for non-root users to add user defined shares to be exported using the "net usershare" commands.

To set this up, first set up your smb.conf by adding to the [global] section: usershare path = /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares Next create the directory /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares, change the owner to root and set the group owner to the UNIX group who should have the ability to create usershares, for example a group called "serverops". Set the permissions on /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares to 01770. (Owner and group all access, no access for others, plus the sticky bit, which means that a file in that directory can be renamed or deleted only by the owner of the file). Finally, tell smbd how many usershares you will allow by adding to the [global] section of smb.conf a line such as : usershare max shares = 100. To allow 100 usershare definitions. Now, members of the UNIX group "serverops" can create user defined shares on demand using the commands below.

"path" specifies the absolute pathname on the system to be exported. Restrictions may be put on this, see the global smb.conf parameters: "usershare owner only", "usershare prefix allow list", and "usershare prefix deny list".

The optional "comment" parameter is the comment that will appear on the share when browsed to by a client.

The optional "acl" field specifies which users have read and write access to the entire share. Note that guest connections are not allowed unless the smb.conf parameter "usershare allow guests" has been set. The definition of a user defined share acl is: "user:permission", where user is a valid username on the system and permission can be "F", "R", or "D". "F" stands for "full permissions", ie. read and write permissions. "D" stands for "deny" for a user, ie. prevent this user from accessing this share. "R" stands for "read only", ie. only allow read access to this share (no creation of new files or directories or writing to files).

The default if no "acl" is given is "Everyone:R", which means any authenticated user has read-only access.

The optional "guest_ok" has the same effect as the parameter of the same name in smb.conf, in that it allows guest access to this user defined share. This parameter is only allowed if the global parameter "usershare allow guests" has been set to true in the smb.conf.

There is no separate command to modify an existing user defined share, just use the "net usershare add [sharename]" command using the same sharename as the one you wish to modify and specify the new options you wish. The Samba smbd daemon notices user defined share modifications at connect time so will see the change immediately, there is no need to restart smbd on adding, deleting or changing a user defined share.

Get info on user defined shares owned by the current user matching the given pattern, or all users.

net usershare info on its own dumps out info on the user defined shares that were created by the current user, or restricts them to share names that match the given wildcard pattern ('*' matches one or more characters, '?' matches only one character). If the '-l' or '--long' option is also given, it prints out info on user defined shares created by other users.

The information given about a share looks like: [foobar] path=/home/jeremy comment=testme usershare_acl=Everyone:F guest_ok=n And is a list of the current settings of the user defined share that can be modified by the "net usershare add" command.

List all the user defined shares owned by the current user matching the given pattern, or all users.

net usershare list on its own list out the names of the user defined shares that were created by the current user, or restricts the list to share names that match the given wildcard pattern ('*' matches one or more characters, '?' matches only one character). If the '-l' or '--long' option is also given, it includes the names of user defined shares created by other users.

Starting with version 3.2.0, a Samba server can be configured by data stored in registry. This configuration data can be edited with the new "net conf" commands. There is also the possibility to configure a remote Samba server by enabling the RPC conf mode and specifying the address of the remote server.

The deployment of this configuration data can be activated in two levels from the smb.conf file: Share definitions from registry are activated by setting registry shares to “yes” in the [global] section and global configuration options are activated by setting include = registry in the [global] section for a mixed configuration or by setting config backend = registry in the [global] section for a registry-only configuration. See the smb.conf(5) manpage for details.

This command imports configuration from a file in smb.conf format. If a section encountered in the input file is present in registry, its contents is replaced. Sections of registry configuration that have no counterpart in the input file are not affected. If you want to delete these, you will have to use the "net conf drop" or "net conf delshare" commands. Optionally, a section may be specified to restrict the effect of the import command to that specific section. A test mode is enabled by specifying the parameter "-T" on the commandline. In test mode, no changes are made to the registry, and the resulting configuration is printed to standard output instead.

Create a new share definition in registry. The sharename and path have to be given. The share name may not be "global". Optionally, values for the very common options "writeable", "guest ok" and a "comment" may be specified. The same result may be obtained by a sequence of "net conf setparm" commands.

Note that due to the nature of the registry database and the nature of include directives, the includes need special treatment: Parameters are stored in registry by the parameter name as valuename, so there is only ever one instance of a parameter per share. Also, a specific order like in a text file is not guaranteed. For all real parameters, this is perfectly ok, but the include directive is rather a meta parameter, for which, in the smb.conf text file, the place where it is specified between the other parameters is very important. This can not be achieved by the simple registry smbconf data model, so there is one ordered list of includes per share, and this list is evaluated after all the parameters of the share.

Further note that currently, only files can be included from registry configuration. In the future, there will be the ability to include configuration data from other registry keys.

This is a mechanism to check the existence or non-existence of certain keys or values specified in a precheck file before applying the import file. The import file will only be applied if the precheck succeeds.

The check-file follows the normal registry file syntax with the following semantics:

· <value name>=<value> checks whether the value exists and has the given value.

Check and repair the registry database. If no option is given a read only check of the database is done. Among others an interactive or automatic repair mode may be chosen with one of the following options

Specify the format of the registry database. If not given it defaults to the value of the binary or, if an registry.tdb is explizitly stated at the commandline, to the value found in the INFO/version record.

Imports a eventlog *.evt file defined by filename into the samba internal tdb representation of eventlog defined by eventlog. eventlog needs to part of the eventlog list defined in smb.conf. See the smb.conf(5) manpage for details.

Exports the samba internal tdb representation of eventlog defined by eventlog to a eventlog *.evt file defined by filename. eventlog needs to part of the eventlog list defined in smb.conf. See the smb.conf(5) manpage for details.

Starting with version 3.2.0 Samba has support for remote join and unjoin APIs, both client and server-side. Windows supports remote join capabilities since Windows 2000.

In order for Samba to be joined or unjoined remotely an account must be used that is either member of the Domain Admins group, a member of the local Administrators group or a user that is granted the SeMachineAccountPrivilege privilege.

The client side support for remote join is implemented in the net dom commands which are:

net dom join - Join a remote computer into a domain.

net dom unjoin - Unjoin a remote computer from a domain.

net dom renamecomputer - Renames a remote computer joined to a domain.

Joins a computer into a domain. This command supports the following additional parameters:

· DOMAIN can be a NetBIOS domain name (also known as short domain name) or a DNS domain name for Active Directory Domains. As in Windows, it is also possible to control which Domain Controller to use. This can be achieved by appending the DC name using the \ separator character. Example: MYDOM\MYDC. The DOMAIN parameter cannot be NULL.

· OU can be set to a RFC 1779 LDAP DN, like ou=mymachines,cn=Users,dc=example,dc=com in order to create the machine account in a non-default LDAP container. This optional parameter is only supported when joining Active Directory Domains.

· ACCOUNT defines a domain account that will be used to join the machine to the domain. This domain account needs to have sufficient privileges to join machines.

· PASSWORD defines the password for the domain account defined with ACCOUNT.

· REBOOT is an optional parameter that can be set to reboot the remote machine after successful join to the domain.

Note that you also need to use standard net parameters to connect and authenticate to the remote machine that you want to join. These additional parameters include: -S computer and -U user.

This example would connect to a computer named XP as the local administrator using password secret, and join the computer into a domain called MYDOM using the MYDOM domain administrator account and password topsecret. After successful join, the computer would reboot.

This example would connect to a computer named XP as the local administrator using password secret, and unjoin the computer from the domain using the MYDOM domain administrator account and password topsecret. After successful unjoin, the computer would reboot.

Renames a computer that is joined to a domain. This command supports the following additional parameters:

· NEWNAME defines the new name of the machine in the domain.

· ACCOUNT defines a domain account that will be used to rename the machine in the domain. This domain account needs to have sufficient privileges to rename machines.

· PASSWORD defines the password for the domain account defined with ACCOUNT.

· REBOOT is an optional parameter that can be set to reboot the remote machine after successful rename in the domain.

Note that you also need to use standard net parameters to connect and authenticate to the remote machine that you want to rename in the domain. These additional parameters include: -S computer and -U user.

This example would connect to a computer named XP as the local administrator using password secret, and rename the joined computer to XPNEW using the MYDOM domain administrator account and password topsecret. After successful rename, the computer would reboot.

Execute a shell command under a global lock. This might be useful to define the order in which several shell commands will be executed. The locking information is stored in a file called g_lock.tdb. In setups with CTDB running, the locking information will be available on all cluster nodes.